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For a while, Spider-Man game were mostly based on the Sam Raimi movies. While games made from movies are often ill-fated, that fact that Spider-Man was being made readily available to the mass market of video gamers sparked enough consumer interest for them to do fairly well. Spider-Man is a pretty big symbol when it comes to Marvel and the comic book industry as a whole, so it figures that games based of the character would do fairly well.

When Spider-Man: Web of Shadows was released after the reasons to rehash games made from the Raimi movies had been exhausted, it was shown that a movie wasn't needed to make a game based off everyone’s favorite wall-crawler. The game received mixed reviews from the general public, but it set the stage for other Spidey games to come, especially since Raimi had left the scene pretty empty by not following up Spider-Man 3.

Enter Quebec-based developer Beenox and the game Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. When the game was announced, people greeted it with glee, and the fact the Spider-Man would not only have another game based around him, but four separate versions of him, gave the game enough of a boost to get off the ground in terms of attention.

The game focuses on one of Spider-Man's many foes, Mysterio, sneaking into a museum late at night and stealing an artifact known as “The Tablet of Order and Chaos”. Spider-Man swings in and stops Mysterio and his illusions, but not before accidentally breaking the tablet into different fragments. These fragments are then scattered across four different universes, each containing their own version of Spider-Man. With the help of Madame Web, The Amazing Spider-Man, Noir Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099, and Ultimate Spider-Man set out to recover the broken fragments and to stop Mysterio once and for all.

In each of the three playable acts, there are four levels, which are to be played by each of the different Spider-Men. While each level had the same goal of recovering a tablet fragment from a familiar Spidey villain, they all had vastly differing game play styles. The Amazing universe focused more on your classic 3D Spider-Man beat-em-up, and the Noir universe more closely mimicked the style of a stealth game. While the 2099 universe used a more acrobatic combat style, the Ultimate universe mirrored the Amazing universe's style.

Each universe also has a unique visual style that is attributed to the nature of that Spider-Man's setting. For example, where Amazing Spider-Man's levels are more modern due to it being set in present day, Noir Spider-Man's levels try to emulate the style of a 1930's era New York. Since 2099 is a year yet to come, the levels are very futuristic. To differ Amazing from Ultimate, they used a cel-shading technique to add a more robust and colorful style to the levels.

Personal Feelings:
This game is honestly one of the best Spider-Man games I have ever played. And considering Activision announced soon after that, due to the games success, Beenox would be the head developer for all future Spider-Man games, I'd say the game really can attest for itself. I think, even if you're not a comic book fan, this game is worth a shot. It's got great visuals, a nice gameplay mechanic, solid humor, and just an overall great storyline. Each level took about an hour to complete, so if you do the math, that's twelve hours of awesome game time. While I do feel a bit let down by how easy the final boss was, the pros far outweigh the cons in this situation. It's one of those games where you can sit down and play it for hours and never get bored. Once you DO finish it, the pay off just feels rewarding because you knew you've just completed an awesome game.

So, hats off to you, Beenox. May you make many more games. Edge of Time may not have done so great, but Amazing Spider-Man sure looks promising!
Disclosures: This game was obtained via Gamsetop and reviewed on the Xbox 360. Approximately 17 was devoted to single-player modes (completed 1 time) and 0 to multiplayer modes. (There were none)

Parents: There really is no risk in letting your child play this. There are no curses or foul language, but the imagery in the Noir levels MAY be a bit frightening to younger players.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing: If you are deaf, you'll miss our on some great jokes and gags, but other than that, it shouldn't impact your enjoyment of the game.

This isn't a bad review at all, in some senses, but....the first three paragraphs are out of place, and to me, irrelevant. Not to be harsh, but who cares about the movies etc?

I would start the review with paragraph 4, and then use three more paragraphs to describe the differences in style and gameplay of the different universes instead, wrapping up with a few more words about the final boss or whatever the conclusion of the game is.

No need to headline the final paragraph as 'Personal Feelings' either. All reviews are personal feelings after all.

Good stuff otherwise. I'd just like to hear more about the actual game than where it came from.

Question: Would my revision be posted as a new post, or edited into the original one?

Clarification: My reasoning behind the first three paragraphs was to emphasize that normally, Spider-Man games needed a boost from the movies to get off the ground, and games based off original stories were few and far in between. When Raimi has finished the movies, the games had nothing to go off of, and thus were forced into having original story lines.

I don't know if that makes it any better, but I'll see what I can do about adding more about the game itself.